Well, I just started running 2.10, and I got the same error you did running tce-update, for a different extension (Mplayer-nodeps.tcz.md5.text). When I re-ran tce-update though it completed OK. So you may be right about it being a network problem.
Also, I got a permissions error on the dep file for Xpdf (the dep file is now in my tce/optional directory) while running tce-update a little earlier. I have the tce directory on a USB stick (FAT 32) so maybe that's an issue?
Both Mplayer and Xpdf still work though.